Size / / /

The train moved through my senses,

a smear of spilled India ink,

and underneath the weight of my tongue,

I tasted oranges.

I told you this, three times,

that I always start my stories the same,

with these words:

Once there was a girl, and her death.

Her death lived with her all her days.

I wanted to be Shahryar,

and you could bring me a thousand wonders.

The last one you keep for yourself

and it could have lit up the bright spaces,

me sitting cross-legged, a ragged lotus,

my nails scratching snakes into your feet.

You could have loved me, so impossible,

and I could have wistfully let you go.

Somehow that sounds more heroic,

falling onto my shield, my ribs splayed,

and hyacinths could have grown from my lungs,

saying always, This here was a beautiful thing.




Nancy Sheng was born in northern China and raised in a ragtag fashion across Canada and the U.S. She is currently a graduate student in library sciences. Her work has been previously published in Goblin Fruit and Stone Telling.
Current Issue
25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
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